Chapter 5. Further Discussions on the “Relational stress” (11)

While living with her parents, Ms.A was still seeing her boy friend, but as a child personality often emerged in front of him and kept complaining about “that woman” (i.e. Ms.A’s mother), her boy friend got tired and began to distance himself from her. Ms.A’s mother stated that she especially had a difficulty dealing with another male personality who often appeared and got very critical of her way of rearing Ms.A in her childhood.
This case is an example of a patient with DID who does not have any overt abuse history, but who nonetheless was in a childhood situation full of the “relational stress”.

2. Femininity and the traumatic stress
So far we examined mother-daughter relationships observed among DID patients and especially daughter’s interpersonal sensitiveness. Now we discuss the topic of the femaleness and dissociation.
We could never miss the clear gender difference in the number of cases of DID. They are predominantly found in female population. According to Ross (1997), female/male ratio of the prevalence of DID is roughly 9:1. As I stated already there was only one case among my 28 cases of DID. Hardly any psychiatric disorder shows this clear sexual difference. There could be many factors implicated, including hormonal difference, nature of the emotional response and the kind of trauma involved. As for the trauma, childhood sexual trauma is well known to be seen predominantly in female patients. The interpersonal sensitiveness is characteristic of female patients as well.
However some data indicate that there is no clear gender difference as far as dissociative tendency is concerned. According to Spitzera, C., Klauerbet al (2003）, DES (Dissociative Experience Scale) is administered to 2153 people but there is no gender difference among high-scoring population.